A Framework of Professional Leadership in Military

Abstract

This article describes a new idea in military leadership based on enabling data from Malaysian Military, which is Malaysian Armed Forces, Malaysian air force and Royal Malaysian Navy as respondents for these studies. In the military, the formation of a leader’s character requires modification of one’s identity, which is certainly difficult to apply. Various leadership development programs have been designed and implemented by the country's military organization’s administrators to produce quality, efficient and effective leaders. The leaders who are produced also need to have spiritual as well as physical strength to carry out the tasks. Nevertheless, the overall model of leadership development that is referenced tends to be physically worldly and marginalized strong spiritual construction. Therefore, to produce future leaders who are spiritually and physically strong, the development of leadership characters should consider the spiritual elements that are the backbone of life. The objective of this study is to formulate guidelines for the development of leadership characters amongst members of the Malaysian Armed Forces. The research methodology used the qualitative method of interviews, focus group discussions, observations and document analysis that provided answers to the questions and objectives for this study. Thematic methods were used to obtain the results for this study which is organizing interview questions into four themes. The themes are professional leadership, programs contents, the role of coach and management support. These themes are derived from an in-depth reading of the highlights from previous studies. Twenty-five in-depth interview questions were constructed based on this theme. Then twenty-five respondents consisting of officers, coaches and platoons in Malaysian army were interviewed. New result from these studies is a guideline for Malaysian Military to develop professional leadership among military that can be used for government policy in improving a holistic training system for the Malaysian military.